Crater House at Roden Crater

“Rather than impose a plan upon the landscape, it was decided to work in phase with the surroundings… but it will be worked enough so the desired experience will be heightened and ordered. This could also allow the piece to exist without beginning or end.”

James Turrell, 2001 MAK, regarding Roden Crater

Conceptually, the home’s design is meant to project ambiguity. Is it modern? Is it classic? Is it old or new? There’s a timelessness to thick masonry arches and a monolithic material palette. The house will exist in a modern world but sit peacefully in a vast 50,000 acre landscape of extinct volcanoes and cinder cones on the edge of Arizona’s legendary Painted Desert. It is an architecture purposely subservient to nature. From the top of the bluff, it barely exists… a brief interruption to a continuous naturally ragged edge. Once inside, there are choices. Introspective work? Or, approach the lower level’s brick arch framing Turrell’s earth intervention back dropped by a canopy of Arizona sky.